Many people struggle with using apostrophes correctly - they're not necessarily the most natural form of punctuation. While periods, question marks and even commas can be relatively simple to understand, apostrophes seem to throw some writers for a loop. There are several correct ways to use an apostrophe in your writing, but there are far more incorrect ways to do so.

The correct way to use an apostrophe - The best defense against incorrect apostrophe use is to know what they're supposed to be used to achieve. There are only three things an apostrophe is good for - showing possession, denoting plurals in lower case letters and use in contractions.

Here's an example of each:
* "It's going to be a long time." - It's is a contraction of "it is."
* "You need to capitalize all of your i's in that document." - This indicates more than one lower case i that needs correction.
* "That is Jim's blanket." - This shows that the blanket belongs to Jim.

The Incorrect Ways - As mentioned, there are more incorrect ways to use an apostrophe than correct ways. One of the most common misuses of an apostrophe is "it's" to show possession. For example: "It's belt broke yesterday." - In this sentence, the meaning the writer is attempting to convey is that "the belt belonging to it broke yesterday." However, "it's" is only used when showing the abbreviation of "it is." Therefore, this is incorrect. The correct form would be: "Its belt broke yesterday."

Another incorrect use of the apostrophe is in dates, particularly when denoting decades or centuries. Here's an example of incorrect usage: "During the 1800's, the California Gold Rush began." This is not correct - there's no apostrophe needed with years. Therefore, the correct form would be: "During the 1800s, the California Gold Rush began."

The only time that an apostrophe should be used in conjunction with a date is if you are omitting the century from the numerical form. For instance, you would write, "during the '80s, taxes increased" to denote the omission of the 19 from the year.

A Special Note on Plural Possessives - Showing possession in writing requires the use of an apostrophe. However, this can be tricky with words ending in "s." The general rule that many writers follow is that words ending in "s" should have an apostrophe added, but no additional "s" as done with singular possessive notation. For instance: "That is James' book". This is the traditional way that many writers do it, but it is also acceptable to write it this way: "That is James's book". The only time that you must not add an "s" after the apostrophe is if the word is plural and ends in "s." Here's an example of this: "That road leads to the Hansons' home." Here, you are speaking of the Hanson family, as well as denoting that the home belongs to them, so you need to omit the "s" after the apostrophe.

Finally, many writers use apostrophes to denote pluralized items when they should not. For instance, commonly used symbols like # and & do not need apostrophes to denote plural usage. Here's an example of incorrect usage: "You need to remove all of the #'s from your paper." This should actually be written without the apostrophe, and would appear as: "You need to remove all the #s from your paper."